Laura Garbes's "Listeners Like Who?"

Laura Garbes is a Sociologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Her research focuses on racism, voice, and the cultural industries.

She applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Listeners Like Who?: Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry, with the following results:

Page 99 of Listeners Like Who? describes the types of feedback received by two employees of color in the public radio industry, Jay and Devin. Jay is a Latinx reporter, and he discusses how he has received feedback from a white audience member about how to pronounce his own name. He reflected on how this is part of the job, as he assumes he needs to educate white audiences given the typical public radio listener. Devin is a Black reporter, and he told me about the pattern of who gets feedback: usually women and people of color, not white men that conform to the typical voice of authority associated with broadcasting.

Looking at page 99 of Listeners Like Who? gives us a good sense of Part II of the book, which outlines how people of color navigate the contemporary public radio industry. Jay and Devin’s experiences, as told in their own words, appear in Chapter 4, "Sounding Like Myself." In this chapter, I ask how employees of color define themselves in relation to an established “public radio voice.” I show how public radio broadcasters of color develop a unique relationship with their own voices through their interactions with existing public radio voice models, audience members, and coworkers. Jay and Devin’s accounts show that they have a deep understanding of public radio’s existing expectations through their interactions with audience members. It also brings to the fore the gendered dimension of these expectations, when Devin noted that any feedback he got was way worse for his female counterparts.

You may walk away from page 99 thinking this is only a contemporary story. But Part I of the book roots these experiences of people of color in public radio in deeper historical processes. In it, I show how public radio was formed as a white racialized industry, despite the best intentions of its founders. I then elaborate on how public radio’s voice developed in the 1970s and 1980s as a new type of authority, one more inclusive to white women but still racially exclusionary. Finally, I discuss the underfunding of public radio, and how it forces stations to rely on donors from the white professional class for financial survival. These elements are key to contextualizing why people of color in public broadcasting continue to face barriers to full inclusion.

Visit Laura Garbes's website.

--Marshal Zeringue